Players - Today I received an e-mail from Avery Chan. many of you may remember that he and his wife, Felicity, moved to East Asia 9 months ago... hence the reason he has not been on the field this season. Today, Avery shared a news article that may provide a little hope that we will see him on the field again and possibly provides a glimpse into the future of the SMFL. It's a little long but very appropriate.
Six Mississippis and Counting
Published: January 29, 2010
ON Wednesday mornings, Andy Lupo, 51, sends out his weekly chain e-mail message to the guys: “How we looking for Sunday?”
Mr. Lupo is counting heads for the regular Sunday 10 a.m. touch football game. And if there’s one thing he has learned about keeping a pickup game going from September to April, 30 Sundays a year for 20 years — through rain, sleet, snow, ice as well his own torn rotator cuff, Abrey Light’s four broken fingers, Jim Dennehy’s two fractured ribs and Glenn Christie’s career-ending ligament tear — it’s to leave zero to chance.
“If you e-mail Andy at 1 a.m., he answers back at 1:05,” said Jack Hayon, 54, an Educational Testing Service vice president who has been playing “just seven years.”
On Thursday of that week, Mr. Lupo reported, “Still early, but looks like a good turnout.”
By Saturday, he was telling everyone that despite Nelson Obus’s torn meniscus, “We should have 21.” And they did.
Mr. Lupo, an executive at an investment bank, and Mr. Light, 51, a general manager for a software company — both present at the first game in 1990 — arrive early to lay out orange cones marking the field.
Lyle Girandola, 50, soon appears out of the woods at the back of the field, a misty figure pushing a wheelbarrow with a wrought-iron firepot to keep the subs warm on the sideline.
Anthony Costa, 54, arrives on his bike after Mass at St. David the King, which makes Mr. Lupo look bad because he tells his wife, Carolyn, that he has to miss church because of the game. H. Fenster, 47, drives the farthest, about 35 minutes from Hillsborough. Everyone brings both their red and blue jerseys since Mr. Lupo keeps it a secret what team they’ll be on until game time.
“Andy has his black-box formula for picking teams,” said Karl Dentino, 53, a marketing executive. His goal is to make teams that are so balanced each week, the game ends in a tie. About half of them do.
The league is called 12 Again, because for two sweet hours each Sunday morning that’s how these middle-aged men feel. “By Sunday afternoon I’m limping around the house pretty good,” Mr. Lupo said.
“I play Sunday, I can’t lift my arm until Thursday,” said Steve Tosches, 53, a quarterback, who coached Princeton’s football team for many years.
“We’re afraid the game will end when someone drops dead,” Mr. Light said.
“That’s why I have this,” said Mr. Lupo, throwing open his trunk, and waving a defibrillator high in the air.
The game’s longevity is in part because of subtle concessions to age. They used to count three Mississippis before rushing. “Then four, then five, now six,” Mr. Light said. “We need more time to get places.”
In their 30s, they’d argue about players rushing the quarterback too soon. But in their 50s they don’t need the aggravation, so Mr. Hayon brings a stopwatch that buzzes when it’s O.K. to rush.
Mr. Obus, 63, an investment manager, says as they age the game gets more like chess. “You don’t just say, ‘Go long.’ We can’t do that anymore. You have to flood a zone. You come up with more complex plays, more paths.”
It makes huddles interminable. “People say, ‘Why do you spend so much time in the huddle?’ ” Mr. Lupo said. “By the time you tell the seventh guy what to do, the first guy forgot what he’s supposed to do.”
There’s no blocking, no tagging hard (“everyone’s got back problems,” Mr. Lupo said), and fumbles are dead balls.
“Our motto is, ‘Monday morning we all need to go to work,’ ” Mr. Lupo said.
When the game started in 1990, they were lucky to have six players. Mr. Lupo and Alan Slepman, the league’s first commissioner, went through backyards, shouting, “Lyle, is this your house, can you play today?”
“It got easier with cellphones,” Mr. Lupo said.
Mr. Dentino, who jogged by one day and joined the game, brought in his neighbor Mr. Girandola, who brought in his neighbor Jerry Fields, 53, who brought in Jonathan Sabin, 42. By the mid-1990s, they had the opposite problem, too many wanting to play, and some not understanding the thin line between worthy competitor and inglourious basterd. “A lot of people claim they’re good guys and they’re really not,” Mr. Lupo said.
They needed men who were athletic, but not too. Scott Brunner, the former Giants quarterback, played for a few weeks. “Oh, my God, he threw too hard,” Mr. Lupo said. “The ball kept bouncing off guys’ chests. People kept running out of the way.
“We’re not looking for the great triathlete. If your wife is saying: ‘What, are you crazy? At your age?’ That’s the guy we want.”
Those wives. In the early years when the kids were young, it was harder. The men were working all week, then gone Sunday morning, too?
“My wife was a little bit on my back,” Mr. Light said. “I was taking away our Sundays. She didn’t get it.” But after 10 or 15 years, he wore her down.
“I know nothing about football,” Susan Light said. “After the game, he gives me the play by play. I say that’s great or that’s too bad — I can just tell if it’s positive or negative. The big thing — he’s happy and calmer after he plays, so I’m happy.”
There’s a final element every sports classic needs, a legend, a Gipper, a Bambino. For the 12 Again league, it’s Mr. Slepman, the first commissioner, and by all accounts, a quippy, civic-minded, big-hearted guy who taught Mr. Lupo everything he knows about running a Sunday touch football league for slow old men. In October 2001, Mr. Slepman, a banker, collapsed on the commuter train home from Manhattan. He had a brain tumor, and on Jan. 13, 2003, he died. Every 12 Again player attended his funeral. Mr. Slepman was buried in his blue jersey and today the town field they play on is named for him.
But that’s only half the legend. Nine months later, a single dad from Boston moved next door to the Slepman home. Shortly after, Mr. Lupo recruited him to the game.
“He seemed to have the right personality,” Mr. Lupo said, “a friendly, mild temperament.” When Mr. Lupo asked the man from Boston if he’d ever played organized football, the man answered no, and Mr. Lupo said, “You’re perfect for us.”
That was Mr. Hayon, the educational testing executive. And two years after replacing Mr. Slepman on the field — not that anyone could truly replace Mr. Slepman, of course — Mr. Hayon married Mr. Slepman’s widow, Holly. When she is asked if her second husband’s love for the same Sunday morning football game had anything to do with it, she said, “It didn’t hurt.”
On a recent Sunday at Alan Slepman Football Field, Mr. Hayon, playing for the red team, caught two passes, made two interceptions and wore the stopwatch around his neck to monitor the pass rush.
Once again, Mr. Lupo’s black-box formulas worked — with one play left in the game and the blue team 20 yards from the goal, the score was tied, 2-2. An icy rain fell as Mr. Fenster, an accounts manager who puts in 60-hour weeks when he’s not quarterbacking the blues, dropped back to pass. He thought of tossing the ball blindly to the back of the end zone. “Sometimes they bat it around and you might get lucky,” he’d say later.
Instead, he saw his teammate Mr. Light cutting across the front of the end zone and threw. Steve Honig, floating on pass defense for the reds, raced in front of Mr. Light, intercepted the ball and streaked downfield with no one near him.
Asked later what he was thinking as he ran toward the end zone, Mr. Honig, 50, the president of an insurance third-party administrator, said: “Wow! That’s all I was thinking. Wow!”
